Friday's Ask the Experts: Charging for services

Friday''s Ask the Experts question from a cleaning professional on the International Custodial Advisors Network (ICAN) "Ask the Experts" page: How much would you charge to grind, polish, crystalize and seal marble floors? This is for a hotel ...4140 sq feet total. Also, do you know how much tax I must charge??? I am in South Florida ...tough competition down here.

The answer:

Bidding software is becoming the leading way to go when calculating accurate quotes. Prime concern would be the factoring of all the cleaning variables, including excessive travel time. So, for a ballpark bid you could estimate around an hour each time and you could price it with your local labor hourly rate multiplied times two or three. However, when allowing only an hour for labor, it is common to use a minimum trip charge. It is unlikely someone will want to drive and ... — Gary Clipperton, president of National Pro Clean Corp.